Mail preparation systems, such as the DOCUMATCH™ mail processing and finishing system available from Pitney Bowes Inc. of Stamford, Conn., establish a mail piece print run at a host personal computer (PC) and then direct the stream to printer peripherals for printing to an envelope and/or to a page substrate. Mail preparation systems are an example of systems whose purpose is to utilize address lists, perform addressing hygiene through the use of address correction techniques, assign barcoding and, download data to addressing printers, collators, sealers, and the like, for the purpose of producing a mailpiece. These systems sometimes have only a single input/output (I/O) port interface between the PC and the document printer. Thus, the current mail preparation systems are generally constrained by their printer hardware architecture.
To support such a system architecture, the application print data stream must be altered to allow the generation of envelope print data streams and its re-injection into the main application print stream. The creation of the envelope print stream involves the capture of text data contained in the document to generate the envelope, the use of an envelope definition module, and the use of proprietary print protocol language for the mail preparation system to direct the data to an appropriate printer.
The print stream created by the main application is generally in the form of text data, though it may take on other forms. The data may be parsed and checked before format correction and barcoding techniques can be directed to the addresses in the text for creation of a mailpiece.
Mailpiece production systems are known in the art and have developed with changes in postal service regulations (such as those of the United States Postal Service, or USPS) and with the proliferation of appropriate software applications. In turn, this production has served the need to automate and accelerate to accommodate growth.
As the United States Postal Service (USPS), together with the postal services of other countries around the world, moves toward more fully automated mail handling in an effort to contain costs while processing ever increasing volumes of mail, automated equipment which sorts and processes mail on the basis of machine readable postal codes, such as the “zip code” or other forms of postal coding, play an ever more significant role. In the United States, postal service regulations provide for a “Postnet” bar code which represents the five, nine, or eleven digit zip code of the destination address in a machine readable form. 4-State can be utilized within Canada.
Additionally, a system for printing envelopes with addresses including bar code is disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,175,691 for a SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLING AN APPARATUS TO PRODUCE ITEMS IN SELECTED CONFIGURATIONS; issued on Dec. 29, 1992 to Baker et al. (hereinafter referred to as Baker), which describes a system for printing mail pieces which includes a printer for printing sheets and envelope forms and a folder-sealer mechanism for folding the envelope form around the sheets to form a mail piece, and a computer based control system for controlling the printer and folder. In the system of this application, when an operator is creating a file of letters to be printed, the operator may designate a selected field within each letter as containing the destination address. The system will then extract the information in this designated field and with it create a new page of material to be printed on the envelope form; and, if the address within the designated field includes a zip code, the system will add a corresponding barcode to the new page. The system then adds this new page to the file before the file is output.
The ability to structure software coding is extremely important when linking data to be downloaded to a printer being utilized in the addressing environment. U.S. Pat. No. 5,583,970 for a PRINTER COMMAND SET FOR CONTROLLING ADDRESS AND POSTAL CODE PRINTING FUNCTIONS, issued Dec. 10, 1996 to Strobel (hereinafter referred to as Strobel), and assigned to the assignee of the present claimed invention, is instructive in this respect.
Strobel is a method and system for printing images to a substrate wherein the commands normally input by an operator, or resident within the printer, can be determined at a host data processor. The system can control address and postal code printing functions beginning at the host computer together. The system will derive printing data, including address data, from a selected application resident in the host computer. The host computer creates and then transmits printer command sets and printing data, via transmitting means to a microprocessor within the printer. The microprocessor drives a language interpreter which directs the printer commands to a parsing step for determining the address location from within the data to be printed. The language interpreter then assigns delivery point digits to a zip code that was isolated from the transmitted address data. The newly created zip code is then matched with the bar code data stored within the microprocessor's corresponding memory. A bar code corresponding to the new zip code is selected. The language interpreter then directs the printer's controller to prepare to print the address with its corresponding zip code, any graphics images that may have been included within the print data, and text, if any. The printer controller positions the bar code for printing, and then prints the bar code and address data, zip code, and any graphics images and text to an envelope or other substrate.
A particular limitation to current methods and systems, however, is found in the assembly of the envelope print stream which fuels the prior art detailed above. Mailpiece production systems having two separate printers and a single I/O port are constrained by the serial connection between their printers, making it impossible for the document printer to query information directly from its corresponding envelope printer. Therefore, as is illustrated by FIG. 2 hereinbelow, these mailpiece preparation systems must integrate two drivers while exposing only one to the application.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide for a method and system for determining and extracting an address from a print stream. Additionally, it is an object of the present invention to generate new print streams by printing to a secondary driver, reading the secondary print streams and injecting the secondary print stream back into the primary application print stream associated with a single I/O port connecting the mail preparation system to its host PC.